


the leftover hours of the day

by kuro49



Series: thirty days of writing '18 [30]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 22:45:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16228841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: You, Jason Peter Todd, wish you were so lucky as to get anything else but dirt in your face and the damp earth pressing down on the soft column of your throat. When you rise from the dead, not even Bruce Wayne can anticipate the havoc you will bring with you.This boy’s got some unfinished business, and that is saying the very least.





	the leftover hours of the day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marourin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marourin/gifts).



> prompt: the leftover hours of the day. marourin and i talk about these two approximately every other day because we are always here for needy jay and guilty bruce.

 

The gorgeous girl of Brucie Wayne’s night is just leaving from the front door of his penthouse when the window of the third guest bedroom is opened from the outside, sixty eight floors above street level with a damn brick like they aren’t in one of the highest buildings of the city.

Bruce hears the loud noise, the blaring of his alarms for about three seconds before it all goes eerily silent.

He continues to rinse the waxy imprint of red lipstick from the edge of the glass rim while he waits for the inevitable. Because there are exactly twenty-two different ways of getting into this penthouse suite without raising a single alarm, and Jason decidedly sets off three.

 

When Bruce exists in this space, he only exists as the man without the cowl.

Jason knows this and still comes to him with a domino on his face and kevlar against his heart like this kind of protection ever really worked.

“She doesn’t deserve anything you have planned for her.”

Bruce says out loud, and there is nothing quite like certainty of this kind. Because Jason knows every single one of those twenty-two ways and still manages to choose the option of making Bruce clean up yet another unnecessary mess of this caliber when he leaves the room strewn in broken glass.

The clatter of Red Hood's helmet down on the nice hardwood floor is loud, is probably significant in some symbolic way that Bruce is way pass the point of wishing he could decipher alone without Jason's help.

“Who says I’m going to do anything to her?” Jason asks, takes five wide strides to find himself filling in the space of the open concept kitchen.

“Says the five ex-girlfriends that seem to have dropped off of the face of the earth, Jason.”

“Don’t be dramatic, _Bruce_." He wields his name like a weapon, punctuates it like it doesn't hurt himself any less. "Just because they’ve stopped answering your calls and stopped responding to your texts doesn’t mean something bad has happened to them.” Jason tells him from where he is leaning against the marble countertop. He reaches out with a hand, drags Bruce’s own unfinished wine glass to himself. “Maybe you just aren’t a very good laid.”

 

Bruce isn’t stupid even if Brucie plays stupid all too well.

If he really wanted to know what happened to any of the girls he’s been with since Jason’s return, he can and he will probably find the very happy relationships they are now in instead of playing arm candy to Gotham’s most eligible bachelor for the fifteenth year in a row.

“You and I both know that last part’s not true.”

If Bruce was a better man, he would admit to knowing why he does what he does. And it's no secret at all when he wants this to happen just as much as his dead boy wonder. But he doesn’t say anything else when he turns, looks at Jason like there is any other way this can end without the two of them going back into this the same way they always do.

“Maybe it’s the brain damage,” Jason says with a tip of the wine glass back, upends the red with his bottom lip touching right where Bruce’s mouth was. “But refresh my memory, why don’t you?”

It goes down so smooth and sweet, and Jason makes a show of dragging his tongue across his mouth, the back of his hand to follow.

 

They don’t know how not to do this.

Jason made sure Bruce’s batarang scarred because even a duffel bag of decapitated human heads later, he wanted something to remember the old man by. 

He wants him to say that he never loved him. But Bruce doesn’t give him what he wants. Bruce walks around the kitchen counter, and Jason doesn’t break anymore glass in this penthouse when Bruce finally kisses him. Full on the mouth and bearing down with every inch of weight their matching baggage allows.

It is one hard kiss that turns into two that turns Jason into a mess against the door of the stainless silver fridge when he finally backs him up against it. Has him grappling for some kind of hold against the cabinet doors with fingernails he’s bitten down to a jagged edge when he touches him with reverence.

The days are long and the nights are short, Bruce owes Jason for what he never did for him. Owes him plenty more if they really want to hash this out in numbers. Jason names his price, and the answer has them both bleeding every time.

 

Bruce strips Jason out of everything except for his shirt, keeps the big red bat blazoned across his chest like the insignia still means something special. Like he has any kind of right to him when he gets to place this kind of claim on him.

The leftover hours of the day are when he devotes himself to him.

Bruce doesn’t leave as the Bat until it is much too late.

Jason rolls over on the fresh cotton sheets, hates that it smells of laundry detergent and nothing but. Except he thinks he might love him all the same because that has to be what the signal in the sky means when it stays lit up for thirty minutes longer than it has any right to be. Bruce lingering by his side until there is no delaying the inevitable once more. Because the mission has always meant more to Batman than anything else. It is the impartiality of justice, and Jason comes second time and time again.

He breaks another window when he leaves, this time in the master bedroom of Bruce’s penthouse suite and calls it a favour when he doesn’t blow the entire place up.

 


End file.
